


By Any Other Name

by Jmeelee



Category: Black Sails
Genre: John Silver's name is Solomon Little, M/M, Names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-05-28 16:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15053003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jmeelee/pseuds/Jmeelee
Summary: **REPOST**By the time Gates had burst through the door and shoved a gun into his face that day in the hold, the wheels in John’s head had already been turning, trying to figure out what the torn page from the logbook could be, and more importantly, how much it could be worth. He had been visualizing a substantial payment, enough coin to free him from the sea forever, and the name John Silver rolled easily off his tongue like a piece of eight into a whore’s purse.





	By Any Other Name

**Author's Note:**

> This is a backdated repost. Of all the SilverFlint stories I wrote, I think I am still proudest of this one :-)

“What is your name?”

The question is whispered so softly that he would have missed it entirely except Flint’s lips are grazing his ear.

“My name?” Silver laughs and stretches his three remaining limbs languorously across the bed. “It’s the same name you were panting not ten minutes ago. Don’t tell me you are growing senile.”

Flint levers himself up on his elbows, the dirty white sheet draped across his back slipping down to rest over the enticing swell of his buttocks. He scrutinizes Silver with accusatory eyes. John’s heart starts to race, but outwardly, he gives nothing away. He is as adept now at being John Silver as James is at being Captain Flint.

As James slides from the bed and moves decisively toward the mahogany desk next to the window, John steals the opportunity to relish the unguarded inspection of Flint’s muscular thighs, broad back and strong shoulders. His eyes trace every scar that adorns Flint’s freckled skin, memorizing the marks. He will remember their routes and paths later, and retrace the map with his tongue. Their chances for physical intimacy are so few, and often rushed almost fully clothed, that the unhurried appraisal feels almost more intimate than their previous encounters. The feeling that swells in his chest when he looks at the fine view of Flint’s endowments reminds him of the first time he laid eyes on Nassau: seeing paradise. 

Papers ruffle as Flint rifles through the top drawer of the desk. Finally, he produces a tattered logbook with a faded leather cover, which he holds aloft for John to see.

Silver rolls over to his side, intrigued. “What is it?” he inquires.

“It’s Parrish’s ship log.” The name of his former captain almost stalls Silver's breath in his lungs, but he keeps his face neutral, forces his chest to rise and fall. He grasps for a quip to deflect Flint from his hunt for the truth.

“Searching for another schedule for me to memorize?”

“Don’t be coy,” Flint spits, anger carving deep lines around his eyes. Silver is disappointed to see the hardened Flint return, when the Flint that had shared his bed moments ago was soft and agreeable. John remains silent in the face of James’s mounting ire, hoping to tip the scales in his favor and come out the winner of this battle of wills. Flint stares at him for a moment longer, and then flips to a sheet at the beginning of the log. “Here,” he says, holding the page out. He is too far away for Silver to make any sense of the tiny black ink. “This is the crew register. I’ve been over it again, and again. The name John Silver is absent.”

Flint pauses. He is unnervingly still, stalking John’s reaction with his eyes like an animal about to kill its prey. John does not fill the pregnant silence with words, only a small smile.

Flint returns to the bed, the logbook held out in front of him like a weapon. “I’ve searched for some document that you have written on,” Flint admits, “to compare the handwriting, but I’ve only found notations on navigational charts, nothing I can use to decipher who you might be.”

The unhappiness in Flint’s tone is what finally prompts Silver to speak. “What does it matter, truly? If my given name was John Silver, John Smith or some other, I am still me. I am still the same man you just took to bed.” He smiles his youthful, toothy smile; even though he knows it is not as charming now that he sports a full beard and moustache. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

This makes James snigger, a small exhalation of air through his mouth rather than a full laugh, but John takes it as a good omen.

By the time Gates had burst through the door and shoved a gun into his face that day in the hold, the wheels in John’s head had already been turning, trying to figure out what the torn page from the logbook could be, and more importantly, how much it could be worth. He had been visualizing a substantial payment, enough coin to free him from the sea forever, and the name John Silver rolled easily off his tongue like a piece of eight into a whore’s purse.

Silver has never considered himself attached to his former name. It was an unlucky name, he thinks, for an unlucky man who had landed in an orphanage with no family or friends. It had landed him on a merchant ship as a lowly sailor, toiling his days away for little pay, and no hope for advancement. He figured he would bury his old name at sea with the former cook he had murdered, but astonishingly, the name keeps surging up the back of his throat like vomit. It does not want to stay dead. He has spoken it aloud to James once, in a story he was spinning about his days at the orphanage. When the teeth of the saw sank into his ruined leg like a mad dog, he had almost screamed his own name. And most recently, when he was grasping Muldoon’s hand as the man slowly drowned, he had been overcome with a frantic desire to wail the name through his tears, to have someone know the truth of him, if only for a few seconds.

He has been absent, far away, reliving the birth of John Silver and it is James’s touch on his bare shoulder that pulls him back, brings him fully into the candle-lit cabin, into the bed they share. He has been debating whether to tell James the truth for months, has wanted to confess since the night James told him about Thomas and Miranda, and the love they had all shared. It had seemed a selfish overindulgence then, making the night about him instead of Flint, and he had stayed silent.

“I wish to know _you_ ,” Flint confesses, and John can deny James nothing in this moment.

“You needn’t have played the sleuth,” John tells him. “If you wanted a name, you need only have asked.”

“I did,” James replies.

“Ah,” John says, conceding, “so you did. My name is Solomon,” he says, and the name is warm honey in his mouth, worn and soft as old leather, alive in a peaceful, honest way that John Silver, in all his falsehoods, could never be. "Solomon Little."

He sees the recognition in Flint's eyes, reads the spark of remembrance on the planes of his weathered face, and it means more to Silver than he is likely to admit that James recalls the first utterance of his true name so long ago. Flint smiles, places the logbook on the bed between them and holds out his hand, which John finds utterly ridiculous since they are both as naked as the day they were born, but he indulges him and shakes Flint’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you,” Flint says, softly. “My name is James McGraw.”

James McGraw is holding his hand, writing poetry on his palm with calloused fingers, and John thinks, perhaps, Solomon Little is a lucky name after all.


End file.
